Creative living is community

I used to think I needed to make more time to make art. To sit down, hunch over, and think about it. Plan to make. Then, make. Even, and especially when, I didn’t feel like it. And while I still play with the value of showing up to honour sacred time and deadlines I’ve reserved for my personal work, I’ve recalibrated the idea that it needs to feel like ‘work’ as I know it from my corporate job, that it needs to feel hard to be good work, and that work is my primary focus. Now, my beautiful life that I intentionally built is my focus. And I’ve come to learn that my art is actually better when it happens in the flow of my life (in the little moments between the things that inspire and energize me).

When I am connected to something bigger than myself, I am fuelled, inspired, regenerated, and ignited. I am engaging in the energy exchange of being poured into, and I get to pour into other relationships (with people, animals, or nature), too. I am the best version of myself. And this experience feels present, without trying.

As the historical and known structures and systems of our society begin to disintegrate (have you read the news lately?), I am really hopped up on the idea that WE need to become the local heroes that build better, alternative ways of living and being alongside the current system—a new place for people to show up and apply their energy to. No one better is coming. And without an alternative, I fall into despair, or worse, the nothingness of total disengagement.

This view clarifies where I put my energy: my local community. I aspire to spend the majority of my time offline and actively building my life by living out in the world. Attending a local event I saw posted on a flyer. Participating in a local business. Paying a local creator to provide their services. Offering my creations out to the world, knowing it matters and where I feel fear is exactly where that ‘building of an alternative way of being’ is occurring. 

So this week, one of the ways I lived creatively was to attend a local seed swap at my community centre. I showed up to trade seeds freely, receive knowledge from experienced gardeners in my community, and simply be inspired by all the different ways people gather to move together. And the renewed story underneath—the alternate way of living—is this: I don’t have to know how to do everything on my own. I just need to begin, join in, and learn.

I say this for me and for you: attend local stuff. Get into the mix. Offer your he(art) work in whatever form feels authentic. The world needs it now more than ever.

What does your local life look like? And what is energizing or inspiring about that for you?